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Nokia's first Windows Phones: the Lumia 710, Lumia 800

Nokia unveiled its first Windows Phone handsets on Wednesday: the Lumia 710 and the Lumia 800.

The stylish phones mark the first major step by Nokia in its gamble on Microsoft's smartphone operating system under an agreement announced in February and signed in April.

The devices, unveiled at the company's Nokia World event in London, are expected to be available in most markets in Europe and Asia this year, but not in the U.S.. The Lumia 710 is set to arrive in the U.S. in 2012. Nokia didn't say when or even whether the Lumia 800 would come stateside.

Windows Phone will need some very compelling hardware if it's going to steal smartphone market share from Google's Android or Apple's iPhone.

The most distinguishing feature of the Lumia 710 is a Nokia trademark: The back cover can be swapped by the user for a different color.

But aside from its looks, the Lumia 710 isn't offering much to differentiate itself from Windows Phone handsets already on the market in the U.S.

It will come in at 0.49-inch thick, with a 3.7-inch touch screen with anti-glare coating and a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, a single-core 1.4-gigahertz processor from Qualcomm, 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash, 512 megabytes of RAM, eight gigabytes of storage with no microSD card slot. The Lumia 710 will run on 3G networks.

All of that is respectable but still would land the Lumia 710 at the bottom end of the smartphone market spec-wise -- competing against other Windows Phones and the Apple iPhone 4, which sells for $100.

The Lumia 800 will get 16 gigabytes of built-in storage and an 8-megapixel camera as well as a unique chassis with rounded edges. Both handsets will run the latest version of Windows Phone 7, that being 7.5 Mango.

Nokia hasn't said how much either phone would cost in the U.S. or what carriers its Windows Phone handsets will be available on.